SPEECH 



OP 



y 



HON. K. Y. WHALEY, 



!OF VIRGINIA, 



DELIVERED 



IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 



'^S^/y 



July 11, 1862, 



ON A BILL TO PROYIDE FOR THE ADMISSION OF WEST YIRGINIA INTO 
THE UNION AS A STATE. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

SCAMMELL & CO., PRINTERS, COR. SECOND & IND. AVENUE, THIRD FLOOR. 

1862. 



SPEECH 



Mr. WHALEYsaid: 

_ Mr. Speaker : The people of West Vir- 
ginia, with unparalleled unaaimit}^, through 
their Representatives; ask for the separa- 
tion of their portion of the State from 
East Virginia, and the admission of it into 
the Union as a separate^ independent, and 
sovereign community. If it were a Terri- 
tory of our national domain, with her su- 
perficies of about twenty-four thousand 
square miles, and with her population of 
nearly four hundred thousand souls, asking 
admission into the Union, there would be 
no hesitancy. If it were a mere question 
of the division of a large State, you would 
at once refuse to entertain the proposition. 
If there were not urgent public and Fed- 
eral reasons therefor, affecting essentially 
the peace, happiness, and prosperity of 
West Virginia, you should promptly de- 
cline to consider the suggestion of the di- 
vision of the ''Old Dominion." If the 
causes demanding the separation were tran- 
sient and evanescent, or such as could be 
removed without political convulsion and 
in a nation's lifetime, or such as might con- 
tinue without the greatest detriment and 
injustice, if the highest weHare and safety 
of the Union could be preserved in the 
present status of affairs, 'tha case would be 
different. 

For eighty years have the people of 
West Virginia suffered from her unnatural 
connection M-ith East Virginia. For near- 
ly three generations has she petitioned and 
sought for the adoption of a liberal and 



just policy toward her. For almost a cen- 
tury has she borne the oppression, insult, 
and contumely of Eastern legislation with- 
out redress and without relief. Forty years 
ago, hoping for no change in policy from 
the Eastern aristocracy, she sought the di- 
vision of the State; some contending that 
the Blue Ridge, and others the AUeghaii}'- 
mountains, should constitute the boundary. 
The seaboard and Piedmont districts, in- 
stead of modifying legislation and render- 
ing it less odious to the people of West 
Virginia, sought to make it more perma- 
nently oppressive by detaching the valley 
from us, extending internal improvements 
of all descriptions into that section, uniting 
the people commercially and socially with 
Pbichmond, treating the West as her rival ia 
commerce, her enemy, and an inferior. 

After the metropolitan city of Maryland 
had extended a branch of its road to Win- 
chester, the Virginia Legislature denied 
further charters. The breeding of slaves 
for southern markets served also to detach 
the valley from the West and assimilate it 
to the East. Of the forty-four millions of 
State debt expended in internal improve- 
ments up to January 1, 1861, only one and 
a half millions have been expended in 
West Virginia. Not only has Virginia re- 
fused to permit us to improve our country, 
but when Baltimore proposed to build rail- 
roads througli our territory at her own ex- 
pense, the Legislature refused a charter. 

The antagonism usually finding place be- 
tween commuuities with social oraaniza- 



tions so widely different as those of West- 
ern and Eastern Virginia, developed to 
such a degree that John Randolph of Ko- 
anoke spoke in the convention of Virginia 
of 1829 of the valley and Western Vir- 
ginia as parts of the State "which I must 
call alien to us, and forever separated from 
our interests and feelings, torn by factions. 
marked by lines which divide her into two 
different people — distinct in feeling, dis- 
tinct in possessions, different and antagoni- 
zing interests." Mr. Baldwin, of Augusta, 
predicted that "if slave representation 
should be forced upon them, the final re- 
sult will be the separation of the State." 
So oppressive had the legi.slation become, 
with no hope of relief in the ordinary way, 
that Mr. Goode, in the convention of A'^ir- 
ginia in 1851, proposed that the House of 
Delegates and the Senate should each be 
divided into two chambers, one composed 
of those east, and the other of the njeni- 
bers west of the Blue Ridge, and requiring 
votes by chambers, and a majority of each 
chamber necessary to appropriate or raise 
money by taxes, loans, or otheiwise. Mr. 
Wise said, "we [the Ea.st] had kept their 
nose [of the West] to the grindstone for 
the last seventy-five years in agony." 

In 18(5U there were 490,887 slaves, of 
■whom only 12,771 were west of the Alle- 
ghanies. By the monstrous system of tax- 
ation, so unjust to the West, no slave, 
though worth §1,800 in the market, can 
be valued over §800 for taxation; and no 
slave under twelve years can be taxod,' 
though worth seven or eight hundred dol-i 
lars. Thus, §200,000,000 of slave property 
owned in the East, its chief property, has 
never been taxed at all, while legislation 
has mainly been for this property and its in- 
terests; and while every species of income 
and property in the West has been fully 
taxed, even to the earnings of the humble 
toiler for daily bread barely sufficient for 
family support. Licenses must be paid for 
at enormous prices for every branch of busi- 
ness, except the breeding, working, and 
selling of negroes, giving monopoly to the 
slave interest of the East, and crushing the 
free labor of the West. In addition tu the 
recording fee, the poor man, buying his 
piece of wild land to clear him a home, 
must pay his one dollar tax to the State j 
before his deed can be recorded. So with I 
all forms of legal process, whether relating ' 



to the living or the dead. , 

For eighty years, as at the present, the 
East has denominated the western lands 
" waste and unappropriated," and has sold 
tliem and granted patents of any portions 
to all who will pay, until the whole country 
has been affected — two, three, or more, 
frequently paying taxes on the same land 
at the same time, thus increasing the rev- 
enue from the West, keeping titles unset- 
tled, defrauding and impoverishing the 
people; the Legislature repeatedly exone- 
rating lands in the East justly assessed, 
and by the same act enforcing the payment 
of a like tax against western lands by or- 
dering sale. There has been one statute of 
limitation for lands east, and another for 
lands west of the Alleghanics. 

One of the greatest injuries sustained by 
our Western people has been an organized 
opposition to a system of free schools and 
popular education, by which the bright 
but untutored minds of our mountain ranges 
and humbler classes have not been devel- 
oped, while colleges and seminaries for 
the rich have bcQn fostered bj' Eastern le- 
gislation. To keep the people in igno- 
rance is a part of the policy of tlu-ir masters, 
the forty thousand slave-owners of East 
Virginia. Since 1776, Virginia has had 
thirty-three Governors, of whom West Vir- 
ginia has had five, and twenty-four Ignited 
States Senators, of which West Virginia 
has had but three. 

But the greatest wrong and insult which 
has degraded us politically and socially is 
what is called the " mixed basis of repre- 
sentation." In the west portion of the 
State there exists a large majority of white 
population, and in the other portion the 
slave property interest, and giving rise to 
diversity of sentiment. The East insists 
upon protection of property by apportion- 
ment of representation; that the majority 
of the people should not rule, but the ma- 
jority of interests; that the great wealth of 
the State is in slaves, and that the forty 
thousand slaveholders of the East should 
rule; that while eight hundred and ninety- 
eight thousand people have, say fifty rep- 
resentatives, $4:95,000 of taxes must also 
have fifty representatives; that slavery, 
and not free white men, is the element of 
political power; that more than one hun- 
dred and twenty-five thousand citizens of 
the West are properly denied represeuta- 



tiou in the councils of the State; that, 
■with 'an inmiense majority of free white 
men in the West, the legishitive power is 
rightly phiced in the hands of the minority, 
giving them thirty majority on joint ballot 
in General Assembly, as Mr. Scott said in the 
Virginia convention, "to secure property 
[slaves] by not surrendering the legisla- 
tive control to a majority of mere num- 
bers." As i\Ir. Bcal also said, " to protect 
slavery from West Virginia." 

The West, on the contrary, while valuing 
property, values persons more; declares 
that according to every principle of repub- 
lican freedom the whole majority, and not 
slaves, should rule; that a minority of in- 
terests should not govern a majority of 
people ; that one dollar in money should 
not be counted equal to two white men ; 
that all men are by nature free and inde- 
pendent; that all power is vested in and 
derivable from the people; that a majority 
of tlie people is the only true bsisis of legis- 
lative power ; that any other basis is a pal- 
pable infraction of the great American doc- 
trine. There is a heartfelt and almost uni- 
versal earnestness of sentiment on the other 
side of the Alleghanies, that a majority of 
the community is the true source of politi- 
cal power ; that no man or set of men ai'e 
entitled to exclusive emoluments or priv- 
ileges, and that by the property basis a 
sectional minority inflicts political degra- 
dation on a large majority of the popula- 
tion; that a denial to the majority of the 
people of the right to protect themselves, 
each and all alike, is the denial of all re- 
publican principle; that everything should 
not pay tribute to the slave power; that the 
doctrine of the sovereignty of the people is 
sanctified by time, and tested and confirm- 
ed by experience, commended by treasure 
expended, the blood shed, and the suf- 
ferings endured in the American Revolu- 
tion. 

The principle of mixed representation, 
based partly on property, was imported from 
South Carolina and planted in the Com- 
monwealth of Virginia — and later, also, 
that of secession. And -do you now won- 
der, under such discipline, that when more 
than a year ago these oppressors, whose cup 
of iui([uity was running over, plunged into 
treason and rebellion, that the people of 
the West, loyal and true, should not only 
have rallied under the national flag, but 



also have rejoiced to escape from such bond- 
age? Then was reorganized the State 
government. Our young men and men of 
middle age gathered around the nation's 
standard, and rallied, leaving wives and 
children, aged parents and property, to the 
mercy of guerrillas and bandits, and num- 
bering as many, proportionately, in the" 
loyal army as any portion of the c -uitry, 
where such •sacrifices as ours are unknoAvn. 
We have done our duty faithfully in this • 
crisis. 

Fidl^r do I endorse what one of our 
worthy Senators from Virginia [Mr. ^VlL- 
ley] said in the convention of 1851 : 

"Our own ginrinus history amply vindicates tho patriot- 
ism of tile mus.srs vvlio shed thi ir blood most froely iu our 
revolutionary struggle for iiidcpondence. Whom did tho 
Father of his Country lead to victory ? Upon whom did ho 
rely in the ' dark days which tried men's souls':' Was it 
upon thu slave owner, the land owner, the man of merchan- 
dise, the wealthy? I will venture the assertion that seven 
leiUhs of those nohle men hail no title to a foot of the soil 
tlu'y enriched by their blood, sheil in defence of it ; and. 
when tliey shoiddered their Icnapsacks they carried on their 
backs their entire stock of goods and chattels. Yet we 
confided in them. We filaced in their keeping our lives 
and fortunes and sacred lionor, and we were not betrayed. 
Wliy the shouts of the victories of Cliepultepx and Buena 
Visui are still echoing in ou'- moiuitains and tloating across 
your lowlands? Wlio fought thu'so brilliant achievements? 
Our landhrds, our slam ownnrs, or Ihe iccalthy jn'oprielaries 
of Iheoiuntry? No, sir. No." 

I would fill our hills and valleys with a 
population loving the Union, men of in- 
dustry and enterprise ; would give to our 
free and manly people the control of their 
own legislation, and emancipate them from 
the thraldom of disloyal and wasted Pjastern 
Virginia. 

Mr. Speaker, this is a question in which 
the whole people of America have a deep 
interest. It is the appeal of West Virginia 
for equal rights, for the rights of the peo- 
ple against the rights of money — mammon 
against liberty. AV^ill the gentlemen of 
this Congress, Democrats and Republicans, 
discard the tried and well-established doc- 
trine of the right of the majority to gov- 
ern? Will you not gixaranty to us the en- 
joyment of this right? Will you permit 
every vestige of liberty to be swept away 
from Virginia? Safety, quiet, peace, and 
liberty can only be found in separation. 
Will you compel us to continue a connec- 
tion not only repiilsive to our feelings, but 
utterly repugnant to all the principles of 
free government? Will you force us to be 
ruled over by an odious and most offen.sive 
aristocracy? to be dependent serfs of our 
Eastern lords? Will the Republican and 
Democratic masses of the North sustain you 



6 



in compellin<r our free people to live in I 
such galling degnidation and bondage ? j 
West Virginia is law-abiding. ^ he has! 
been ardently uttached to the good old 
Conunonwcalth. When the Kast was in|[ 
peril, western men flew to the rescue and i 
sacriticed even life itself in defending theij 
border towns and cities from fire and sword, !i 
and eastern property from jiillage. The 
East in the late secession movement has re- 
•paid us by calling a convention unsanc- 
tioned, witlaout the consent of a majority, 
usurping powers to our injury; by pre- 
t^ended ordinances requiring us to separate 
from and wage war against the Cxovern- 
ment of the United States, and against t-he 
citizens of friendly neighboring States; at- 
tempting to subvert the I'nion of Wash- 
ington and his copatriots,andto transfer our 
allegiance to a rebellious confederacy, and to 
place the whole military force and opera- 
tions of the Common wealth under the control 
of the rebellious southern confederacy; iu- 

V stituting a reign of terror to suppress the 
free expression of the will of the people; 
making elections a mockery and a fraud; 
instituting war by seizing the property of 
the Federal Grovernment; orii:anizin'r and 
mobilizing armies to capture and destroy 
the capital of the nation; attempting toj 

.bring the allegiance of the people of thcj 
United States into direct conflict Avith 
their subordinate allegiance to the State. 

The Western Virginians arc, and always 
have been, of the race of American pio- 
neers — the conquerors and cultivat(n-s of 
the wild regions of the New AVorld — 
mountaineers by nature, and democrats, in 
the legitimate sense of the word, by in- 
stinct. They belong to the advance guard 
of modern civilization. In principle, policy, 
and interest, they arc of the progressive 
party of the American people. Everything 
in them and around them and before them 
impel them to proccfd — nothing that allows 
them to recede. ]3y this difference of 
character and conditions, they are morally j 
and politically divorced from Eastern Vir- 
ginia. A mountain chain divides us geo- 
graphically; a guil' as broad as that be- 
tween Abraham and Dives, lies between us 
in spirit, institutions, and destiny. Sooner 
or later the virtual division so long felt to 
be necessary, will and must be acknowl- 
edged and establi:^1u■d in fact. 

in the State of Virgiuia, immediately 



before its ordinance of secession, there were 
490,887 slaves; of these there were but 
12,771 in AVest A'irginia, or one in thirty- 
nine of the whole number, while its free 
population numbers 034,021, or closely ap- 
proaching one-third. Eroni such a diver- 
sity of interests as the dilfcrence in slave 
population, and from such a preponderance 
of political power in the State to sustain 
the system' of work without wages against 
the free labor of the West, helped out, as it 
has been, by the atrocious principle of 
slave property representation, it is easy 
to infer the malign influences that have 
retarded our progress in everything neces- 
sary to our welfare. Our contributions to 
public measures have not been paid back 
to us in the internal improvements which 
our country demands; nor in the fiee 
school system, to our advancement in all 
that makes a people prosperous and happy. 
The tide of emigration has been turned 
away from a country tempting to the men 
that are building up an empire in the 
Northwest as " the sun visits in his wide 
career." Our mountains full of minerals; 
our coal, marble, salt, rock oil, are all held 
under the ban of a middle age policy of 
I legislation. Our rivers are unimproved, 
and our valleys arc shut out of the nuirkets 
I that a happier government would long 
; since have opened to them. The mass of 
! these mischiefs is to(j great and too nun)e- 
I rous for statement, as the injury is be^Hind 
calculation. 'JMiey may bo summed up in 
one generally comprehensive and terribly 
j significant fact. The State of Viririnia, 
I larger than Pennsylvania and Maryland 
I put together, as old as cither, and naturally 
; richer than both, advanced in free popula- 
' tion but 156,Ut)3, or twelve and a half per 
cent., in the last ten years; while Penn- 
! sylvan ia made an increase of 594,584 per- 
I sons, equal to twenty-five and three-f|uar- 
j ters per cent., mure than d<iuble the rate 
I of growth in that great ]iroduct which in 
a country like ours is the sign and a pmuf 
of all other kinds of progress. 

Are we not right, Mr. Speaker, in crying 
out with the apostle, " who shall deliver us 
from the body of this death ?" }Uit we 
have already, by our own act, thrown off 
the decaying and corrupting carcass that 
, so long cumbered and oppressed us. and 
we are now asking you to break the slender 
i thread of State unity that fictitiously holds 



•us together here in representation and re- 
sponsibility. 

Wliile the secession of Eastern Virginia 
seemed too monstrous to be possible, and 
while it stood merely as a temporary tri- 
umph of political desperadoes over the 
sober and better judgment of her real 
people, we who knew that the act of seces- 
sion was a falsehood of the convention, and 
therefore believed that she could not be 
constrained into a mad and treasonable re- 
bellion in fact and deed, as well as in words, 
hoped that ere this time she would return 
to loyalty ; but the history of the last year, 
and the attitude of her people to-day, have 
opened our eyes. Instead of repentance, 
they exhibit nothing- less than the very 
desperation of popular insanity. We no 
longer hope for their return to the 
spirit of unity and peace. Possibly we 
might forgive the bloodshed, the robberies, 
the imprisonments, which they have so 
ruthlessly inflicted upon us; but it is not 
possible for them to become worthy of such 
forgiveness, or capable of such forbearance. 
They first made themselves our enemies, 
and now they have made us theirs. We 
cannot again go, as a minority of the State, 
into their legislative councils; we will not 
again endure their malignant domination. 
The constructive unity of the State of Vir- 
ginia is a mere legal fiction; in common 
English, it is not true of the present, and it 
is as clearly impossible in the future. We 
have for more than a year stood front to front 
at the point of the bayonet. We never can 
again stand side by side in their halls of 
legislation. They cannot beat us in the 
battle-field. We will not surrender to their 
superior numerical force at the ballot-box. 
They have never done us justice or shown 
us mercy in either. We choose, if we must 
choose, that in which we had the free use 
of our prop'fer defences; and Grod be with 
the right. 

We are constrained by the circumstances 
of this wicked rebellion to cast our fortunes 
in with our kindred of the free North and 
W^est. Give us our State independence, 
and we will repay it with such benefits as 
might well purchase a greater boon. The 
Alleghany chains on our eastern and south- 
ern borders are the natural boundaries for 
our State line, that is to be eternal, what- 
ever happens to the semi-tropical regions 
of the Gulf and the eastern slope of the 



Alleghanies south of the line that nature 
and civilization have dedicated to demo- 
cratic liberty and efjuality. Our streams 
from their very fountain-heads flow into 
your rivers, and all tlic territory from the 
Alleghany peaks to the great lakes have 
one common interest, and must forever be 
one united people. Your northern lakes 
are within our neighborhood. Our inter- 
ests are common, reciprocal, inseparable, 
and we have proved our fraternity, political 
and moral, by all that is difficult and dan- 
gerous in the separation of our political 
ties, and by the resolute endurance of all 
the cruelties of a civil war within our bor- 
ders. The groans of our slain and impris- 
oned people, the flames of our burning 
dwellings, the devastation of our farms and 
villages, we oifer in support of our claim ; 
and finally we urge the necessity of the 
measure as a sufiicient answer to all scruples 
that lawyers or politicians can urge. There 
can be no constitutional objection. The 
clause in the Federal Constitution which 
provides ''that no new State shall be erect- 
ed within the jurisdiction of any other 
State without the consent of the Legisla- 
ture of the State concerned, and of Con- 
gress," is in all respects satisfied. Con- 
gress has already recognised the restored 
government of Virginia to be the true gov- 
ernment of Virginia. The Senators which 
the Wheeling Legislature elected hold their 
seats as Senators of Virginia. This same 
Legislature has by vote authorized the for- 
mation of the new State, and it now re- 
quires only the ratifying vote of Congress 
to consummate the procedure in precise ac- 
cordance with the Constitution. If the 
body of that State shall hereafter deem it 
hard that it was dismembered, it must be 
content to count it among infelicitous con- 
sequences, parricidal madness. 

The New or West Virginia stands and 
promises ever to stand within the rights 
and duties of a member of the national 
compact. The Union rent and shattered 
by fratricidal strife, whether restored or di- 
vided, must be reconstructed. Why not in 
the territorial limits of the States as well 
as in the other conditions of the settlement 
where policy, expediency, and necessity 
alike demand it? 

We appeal to this Congress in the name 
of the one hundred and twenty-five thou- 
sand of the white majority of West Vir- 



giuia, and of the whole population, for 
speedy relief. We appeal to your sense of 
honor and justice, to your appreciation of 
the ji-reat principles of freedom and politi- 
cal equality, to deliver us and let us enter 
on a career of honorable prosperity. We 
speak nut the sentiments of an individual^ 




013 760 543 

nor those of momentary excitement. They 
are the sentiments of our entire people — 
deep, fixed, heartfelt, unalterable senti- 
ments, cherished for three-quarters of a 
century, and we feel assured that we shall 
not appeal in vain to this House and the 
American people. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 760 543 <; 



p6Rnuli$^4 



